I don’t think they will recast. Considering how far in advance they record stuff, we’ll probably still be getting Tom Baker stories for years afterwards. And when they do eventually run out, I imagine 4 will be relegated to short trips and audio novels, since Tom has done more than 10 years worth of audios at this point. It’ll probably be a similar deal for the other classic Doctors as well.
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In many ways, Dodo on screen was never properly developed as a character, more a template, an archetype. This has given the Big Finish team, and Lauren Cornelius, a largely blank canvas on which to work. I enjoy listening to Dodo in the audios because I get a much better sense of who she is. I actually like her more as a result.
Poor Jackie Lane, I feel, suffered at a time when the production team was in turmoil (the John Wiles era does not appear to have been a happy one behind the scenes) and was then deemed surplus to requirements when Innnes Lloyd took over. Really not her fault and I’m pleased that the character finally has an opportunity to develop (much like Mel, in the main series).
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My favorite First Doctor performer is Peter Purves, I can forget it’s not Hartnell when he reads for the character in the same way I can easily forget while listening that Troughton, Treloar, Culshaw, and Miller are recasts. Nobody else has managed that for me with the First Doctor, although based on Geoffrey Bayldon’s performance in the Unbound audios, I suspect he might have been able to. One of the very few to capture Hartnell’s twinkle properly imo.
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He’s really good! I have listened to a couple of stories with Purves’ One, but this reminds me that I should listen to more.
This is a bit similar to how I feel about Frazer Hines’ take on Troughton. It’s not perfect, but it’s close and I enjoy it immensely!
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I was originally very impressed by Hines’ Second Doctor, but as time has gone on I’ve become less enamored of it and it’s left me cold (unfortunately I think this must at least partly be due to gaining more exposure to Frazer Hines himself and liking him less). Especially once Michael Troughton came along who I think does a significantly better job.
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Well, yes. Now that Michael is in the fray, we don’t need Frazer as Two anymore. He was the best we had before that, but that’s not the case anymore.
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See, this is why I so enjoy Noonan’s take on the First Doctor. He has that twinkle and balances it with those moments of irritability so well. I can see the physicality of Hartnell’s performance when I listen to Noonan, which is a real gift. I agree that Purves does very well at impersonating Hartnell’s Doctor but, on audio, Noonan is the First Doctor for me.
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Quite so. I did used to love Hines’ impersonation and still think it’s very good, but the more I’ve listened to it, the more I can hear Hines doing his Troughton rather than just hearing the second Doctor. Michael Troughton has truly nailed his father’s characterisation after his first couple of stories. He really is phenomenally good now!
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I was never convinced by Frazer’s Second Doctor. I found it hard to listen to him switching characters and often narrating, too. His Jamie was still good, but I just couldn’t believe in his Doctor. It must just be me, but I was always nonplussed when I saw his Troughton impression described as uncanny. It seemed to me to be more of an exercise in indulging an actor to keep him on side than that of getting a good Second Doctor. Michael Troughton is much better.
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I’m the same with Frazer. In the absence of anybody doing the Second Doctor it meant we could get new stories but I have to say I never saw the ‘uncanniness’ people spoke about either.
The scene with Tennant, Bradley and Hines as 10, 1 and 2 in Collision Course shows up quite how far away he actually was in my opinion.
Michael Troughton is doing excellent work. He has the genes which offer some approximation to his father’s cadences but it’s way more than that. That would count for nothing if he weren’t acting the character really well, which he is.
I’ve found the range so far very up and down, with a tendency towards down if I’m honest, but Michael himself is, for me, easily the greatest asset to it.
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That’s it in a nutshell. He has an advantage, clearly, with the voice but that can’t make up for the performance. I don’t think he got it straight away, but he rapidly found the groove and is now as close to flawless as I think we can get.
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I went the same way with Frazer. As it went on, he seemed to rely to much on the breathy ums and ers and it became distracting.
I haven’t actually heard Troughton properly yet although I do have the first Beyond the War Games set because he was at a convention I was at and signing copies and I caved.
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I know that David Troughton has also played the Second Doctor, and he sounds a little more like his father than Michael does, but David has a harder edge to his performance than Michael. I feel that Michael is the better choice, due to his lightness of touch and ability to play the softer side of the Second Doctor. David is a phenomenal performer with a gift for comedy and satire, but he doesn’t tend to play softer characters. At his core, the Second Doctor was a cuddly and caring type, which requires a slightly different skill set. I really like Michael’s take on him.
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Precisely! I couldn’t recognise the first and second doctors in this scene. I had no idea who they were supposed to be and it took me some time to work it out from context because the performances gave me no clue!
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This set was OK. It’s a start, but he didn’t quite inhabit the role straight away for me. He does get there, though, and when he does… by God he’s good!
Having listened to “Operation Werewolf” I genuinely feel like I’ve watched a missing Troughton era story. His performance was, in my mind, that good and the story was so evocative of the era anyway.
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The First Doctor. Splendid chaps - all of them!
I love the Noonan Doctor, but I also have a great fondness for Purves’ interpretation. I bought three ‘Early Adventures’ in a BF sale a while ago (An Ideal World, Entanglement and Crash of the UK-201), all of which feature Purves’ take on The First Doctor, and had an absolute ball with the stories. As a missing mini 1DA series, the tales worked really well. I hope it isn’t long before we get many more Noonan stories.
The David Bradley version I also really like. But - and here’s the stinger - the supporting cast of regulars, except for Jamie Glover as Ian, are as flat as a pancake. None of them have any of the spark of the original Susan and Barbara, only offering a visual similarity, hence their inclusion in TV’s Adventure in Time and Space. I’ve seen Bradley in many things, and he’s always great - I just wish his Doctor could be set apart from his television regulars.
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I agree he took a while to ‘become’ the Second Doctor. But he seems to have got there now. I’m listening to Deathworld now, and it’s great to have three such fine interpretations swapping insults with each other. A vagrant and a fop, indeed! Hmmph!
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I really struggle with all of the Adventure in Space and Time cast but especially Claudia Grant’s Susan. None of them really work for me as the original TARDIS crew and I’m putting it out there, that I don’t actually think David Bradley is a very good First Doctor. He’s not a bad William Hartnell but I don’t think he quite transitioned to playing the Doctor (although Moffat’s insistence on writing him as a sexist embarrassment to modern ideals really didn’t help matters).
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For all the amazing things Moffat has written, I’ll never know where he was coming from, or what his intentions were, in rewriting the First Doctor in that way. Never once did William Hartnell’s incarnation lapse into the crass humour. The repeat of the ‘jolly good smacked bottom’ line from Dalek Invasion of Earth was curious, too, to put it kindly, as was Bill’s reaction to it. I don’t know what was going on in the showrunner’s mind that day.
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Spot on here.
I do actually enjoy listening to David Bradley’s First Doctor audios but I’ve always seen him as an “alternative universe” First Doctor rather than… the definitive article (shall we say). He was very good as Hartnell but his delivery isn’t the same for the Doctor and simply doesn’t create the spirit of the character not embody the physicality of Hartnell’s performance in the way that, say, Stephen Noonan does.
And, yes, the less said about the way the First Doctor was written in “Twice Upon a Time” the better. I love so much of Steven Moffat’s writing and I mostly love that episode… except for the First Doctor. To use him (out of character) as a sexist stereotype didn’t show progress, it just showed disrespect and, in a rare moment of character blindness from Moffat, cast serious doubt on how well he’s ever really got the first Doctor. It was, in a word, bizarre.
For all the mud slung at Chris Chibnall (not by me, I hasten to add), he corrected course significantly in “The Power of the Doctor” and, in my opinion, actually got the best First Doctor performance we’ve ever had out of Bradley (on screen OR on audio).
I still prefer Noonan’s take on audio though. 
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